Dependable Epigraphs
My epigraphs will prepare you for the excursion
but not for the ruts in the road.
— Virgil
Stay well ahead of your turnips in the garden of life.
— Michel de Montaigne
Never parade your ignorance; a discreet amble down a side street will suffice.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Don’t swat flies close to the ear of God.
— St. Francis of Assisi
Metaphors are the unstable companions of an already impractical fellow.
— Henry Ford
Those who are not willing to subvert the law do not have sufficient stake in the outcome of events.
— Niccolò Machiavelli
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, religion is certainly the first.
— Voltaire
Everywhere I go I find a poet has already been there neurotically before me.
— Sigmund Freud
Socializing is networking to no purpose.
— Oscar Wilde
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
— Paul Valéry, as quoted in the original French at a press conference by George W. Bush
Farewell, O insatiable biographers of the future.
— William Shakespeare
Pimp my soporific and annoying orchestral arrangements, bitch.
— Lawrence Welk
The peasant’s place is in the hovel.
— Harry & Leona Helmsley
The woman’s place is in the novel.
— Henry James
Never let Henry James have the last word.
— Edith Wharton
You’ve got to know when to stop.
— Leo Tolstoy
from Winter Journey (Hanging Loose Press, 2008)